Trickster and the Egg

Hey all, hope you're getting along ok in the heat. I spent the day trying to get the last of the laptop screens disassembled, so instead of the usual newsletter, you're getting a short story I wrote a few years ago. It's longer than the usual newsletter, but hopefully the plot makes up for that. I also didn't get around to doing my nails, so I'll be sticking some paintings of mine into the story to make up for that. Hope you enjoy seeing a bit of my fiction writing, and hopefully we'll be back to the normal format next week.

Once upon a time...

Long ago in the story times, the animals and spirits lived with Mother Nature in a great forest.

They lived in harmony, and they lived in freedom. Each animal followed their own nature, and each spirit followed theirs.

Birds flew through the sky, and air spirits danced on the breeze behind them. 

Fish swam through the rivers, and water spirits played in the eddies they created. 

Worms tunneled through the soil, and earth spirits breathed through the holes they left behind.

But one spirit, named Trickster, found his nature not in one of the elements but in his own laughter. He drew strength not from his connections with the other beings in the forest, but only from his own thoughts, his own words, and his own feelings.

Soon, Mother Nature began to hear from the animals that they were being hurt by Trickster’s actions.

Bear came to Mother Nature and cried “Mother, a terrible thing has happened! Trickster talked me into leaving my long, beautiful tail in the freezing water until it broke right off! I love my brother and I don’t want him to be hurt, but every time I look at my stubby little tail I want to smack him with my heavy paws until he is sorry.” 

Mother Nature held Bear to her and said “I understand your pain. You should not have had to go through that. I will think about what to do.”

Raven came to Mother Nature and cried “Mother, a terrible thing has happened! Trickster came to my nest while I was sleeping and filled it with charcoal! Now my beautiful bright feathers are dull and black! I love my brother and I don’t want him to be hurt, but every time I see my wings and miss their bright colors I want to peck him with my sharp beak until he is sorry.”

Mother Nature held Raven to her and said “I understand your pain. That should not have happened to you. I am thinking about what to do.”

Racoon came to Mother Nature and cried “Mother, a terrible thing has happened! Trickster gave me this soft, fluffy food that smelled like fruit and sugar, but when I tried to wash it in the river, it disappeared! I love my brother and I don’t want him to be hurt, but if this happens again I will END him!” 

Mother Nature held Racoon to her and said “I think that reaction is a little out of proportion. But I have thought about what to do.”

Finally Mother Nature called Trickster to a clearing, and showed him a beautiful jeweled egg. 

“Trickster,” she said, “I need to tell you something very important.”

“This egg is deeply precious to me. It contains a world, and in that world is the most powerful lesson that I have ever learned. If someone were to take the egg, they could do whatever they liked to that world, and they could take my lesson for themselves.”

“I need you to make sure that this egg is safe, and that no one ever touches it. Will you do this for me?”

Trickster felt honored to be trusted with this request. He agreed wholeheartedly and set about devising ways to protect the egg.

He went to Bear and said “Hey Bear! Don’t touch Mother Nature’s precious egg, or I’ll wait until you’re hibernating and shave off all your fur so you look ridiculous." Bear looked affronted and wandered off.

He went to Raven and said “Hey Raven! Don’t touch Mother Nature’s precious egg, or I’ll tell Muskrat where you keep all your shiny baubles so he can take them!” Raven turned his back and flew away.

He went to Racoon and said “Hey Racoon! Don’t touch Mother Nature’s precious egg!” But but that point, Racoon was already coming towards him with a very intense look on his face, so he decided to go protect the egg more directly.

He went back to the clearing Mother Nature had shown him and thought about how to guard the egg. 

He scouted around the perimeter of the clearing, and saw that there was no one coming from any direction. 

He piled brush into improvised walls to limit the angles of approach, and built traps and deadfalls in the corridors they formed.  He found a place to sit where he could see anyone approaching from a long way off, and piled good throwing rocks next to his seat.

Finally, feeling satisfied with these physical defenses, he turned to look at this egg that Mother Nature had told him was so important.

The egg was covered in tiny facets, and it glinted in such a way that if he moved his head even slightly, it appeared to change color and even shape.

As he looked closer, he thought that he saw a miniature forest, much like his own, reflected in each facet.

The sight fascinated him. He knew it was the first time he had seen it, but it hit with an urgent, aching familiarity. Something deep within him had been hooked and he felt himself pulled inexorably towards the egg. 

 He could see tiny clouds floating above tiny trees. An entire world that he wouldn’t have to share! He could do whatever he wanted and no one would ever tell him off or get in his way.

After all, he rationalized, he’d done so much to keep the egg safe. Surely he had earned the right at least to hold it in his hands.

His promise to Mother Nature quickly forgotten, he reached down with both hands to grasp the egg. But as soon as he touched it, he lost his balance, and he felt himself falling forwards. At first he panicked, sure that he was about to crush the egg he was supposed to be protecting. But as he continued to fall, he realized that he wasn't falling *onto* the egg, but *into* it instead. 

He fell through the clouds. He fell towards the trees. He landed in a deep, circular lake with a splash that felt big enough to reach Grandmother Moon up in the sky.

He swam to the shore, crawled up to the treeline, and fell asleep on a pile of soft moss.

He woke the next morning, just as the first ray of the sun peeked over the horizon. Mother Nature was sitting next to him on a large mushroom. 

“Trickster,” she said, “I hoped we would not have this conversation, but I suspected we would. I will miss you greatly while you are in here. Today you will gain a powerful lesson, but the learning will not be easy for you. I always hope that my children will be spared from that struggle. Today, you will come to know the full extent of your nature,  and after today, the world will be forever different.”

She drew him up and led him over to the edge of the lake. He saw now that the beach he had crawled over the night before was covered in smooth, shiny pebbles in every color that could be imagined.

“Each of these pebbles represents a life. When you are ready to choose a life, throw its pebble into the pond and you will begin your journey. I will come back to you at the end of the day and you can tell me what you have learned.” 

With that, she vanished, and Trickster got to his feet. He had no intention of following Mother Nature’s advice. He was too smart to need lessons. If it was that important, he would have figured it out already. 

He had an entire world to himself, and he intended to enjoy it. He wanted to put the beach behind him as quickly as he could.

He transformed himself into a stag and took off running away from the pond. He kept the sun at his back and ran west for what seemed like days. He chased his shadow through the trees until he thought his legs would give out. Finally, he saw a clearing ahead of him. He put on a burst of speed and broke through the treeline. Ahead of him, he saw a deep circular lake surrounded by brightly colored stones. And his own footprints leading away from the opposite side.

He cursed himself for going in circles, and transformed himself into a hawk. He flew high up above the trees, so that he could not get turned around. Again he kept the sun at his back as he rode the air currents, watching the trees pass below him. After what felt like days and days, he spotted a break in the trees and circled in to land. Only to find himself landing at a deep circular lake surrounded by brightly colored stones, on the same mushroom on which Mother Nature had sat to talk to him.

He started growing increasingly frantic as he started feeling trapped. If going forwards and going up didn’t work, he would try going down. He jumped into the lake and transformed himself into a fish. He swam down, deeper and deeper, using the increasing water pressure to judge his direction. He swam and he swam until he surely should have hit the bottom of even the deepest lake. Finally, he felt the water pressure begin to lessen, and he saw a circle of light ahead of him. Sure enough, when he broke the surface of the water, he was back at the same circular lake, with its brightly colored stones and its inexplicable power to draw him back no matter how he tried to flee it.

He was hit by a sudden wave of loneliness. In all of his travels, he had seen nothing but trees and water. There was no one to tease, no one to play with, no one in this entire world except himself. He had expected to feel powerful, but he only felt trapped and alone. 

He curled into a ball and hugged his knees, staring at his shadow and waiting for Mother Nature to come comfort him.

And it was while he was staring at his shadow that he realized something was very wrong

In all the time that he had been traveling, the sun had not moved. It was still just barely peeking above the horizon. Mother Nature had said that she would be back at the end of the day, but the end of the day wasn’t getting any closer. It was time for him to finally take a look at the lake and its pebbles. 

Along most of the shore, the stones were mixed in a wild rainbow of bright colors. No two stones were quite alike. They had different patterns, different combinations of colors. He picked up a pebble speckled in orange and red, and felt a subtle tensing in his legs, like they were getting ready to run. This was a life of anticipation and worry. He picked up a clear blue pebble threaded with veins of milky white. He felt his muscles relax and his breathing slow. It was a life of contemplation and mindfulness. 

At the northernmost tip of the pond, there was a patch of stones of deep, uniform black. It was a small island of sameness, and it drew his attention amongst so much variation. But when he picked up one of these black stones, he was immediately hit with an overwhelming wave of grief, pain, and loss. He dropped the rock in shock and fell to his hands and knees.

Why would Mother Nature want him to live a life like that? He had always thought she loved him. But now she had left him alone in this new world of the pond in proximity to these terrible emotions.

He was so angry. One by one he took those black rocks and flung them into the woods as far as he could, taking a dark joy when they thunked into tree trunks hard enough to chip the bark. He screamed his anger into the early dawn light. 

Once the beach was bare where the black rocks had been, he searched the pebbles for the strongest anger he could find. He wanted a life whose anger matched his own. Rock in hand, he stood by the lake, puffing breath in and out of his nose, working himself up into a frenzy.

Then he threw the stone into the lake.

When he opened his eyes, he could see only blurry black and white shapes. He had no control over his body. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t even change shape! He was being held and moved around, but he had no idea what was going on. He let out his anger and frustration in a terrible wail.

Over time, he figured out how to distinguish colors, and how to focus his eyes. He learned how to move his arms and legs. It all went so slowly! He seemed to be stuck as some sort of small monkey. He was being picked up and carried around by larger monkeys. He raged at the indignity of it all. 

Time passed. His body changed and grew. But his anger at his situation only intensified. He was the trickster! He should not have to fuel his body with macerated plants! He should not have to lose consciousness for hours at a time! And he absolutely should not have to squeeze the remains of the macerated plants out of one of his orifices once his body had extracted its fuel!

Eventually the large monkeys who controlled him sent him to a place with other small monkeys. Finally, he had an outlet for his anger. When he was alone with the other small monkeys, he could hit and kick them, and make them too afraid to go to the large monkeys for help. He liked to see the fear in their eyes. It was what his anger wanted.

These new large monkeys began to teach him things. He learned to read and write in their monkey language. He learned how to think about numbers in the same way that they did. Over time, he became so entangled in this monkey world that he started to forget his life as the trickster. But he never forgot his anger.

He went through his life feeding his anger with the fear he could inspire in others. As he grew strong and tall, he found that he could make them flinch away just by pretending he was going to hit them. He laughed when he did that, and for a minute or two his anger was sated. But it always returned.

He found other people who shared his anger and his joy in causing fear. They roamed the city together, targeting those who society left unprotected and subjecting them to fear and violence. They drove fast cars, throwing their beer cans out the window as they went. He was trapped in this hell world. He might as well get to enjoy himself.

Eventually his friends invited him along on a rare daylight trip. The types of freaks he enjoyed beating up were trying to have some sort of rally to force normal people to agree with their bullshit. They needed to get in there and bust some heads to put them back in their place.

He drove his friends to the rally in the back of his pickup truck. They jumped out and waded into the crowd with plastic shields and steel batons. He drove around the perimeter of the crowd, honking his horn to drown out their speakers and occasionally swerving his steering wheel to feint towards the crowd with his truck. His anger watched as the freaks scattered, and he smiled.

But then he spotted a single freak, standing still and watching him intensely. Somehow it was like the freak knew him, like he could see to the center of his soul. Suddenly his joy was gone and his anger returned in full force. What had this freak done to him? He had to stop the freak from looking at him like that.

He gunned his engine. The freak was standing in front of a concrete bridge pillar but he didn’t even care. His truck and his anger howled in acceleration as he barrelled faster and faster towards the staring freak. He saw his bumper crush the freak’s chest a fraction of a second before his truck hit the pillar and everything went black.

He awoke back on the pebble beach, wondering what the hell had just happened to him. How had he forgotten himself so completely? The monkey world had felt so real. He had lived there for more than three decades, and now it was what, a dream? 

He sat on a mossy log and tried to orient himself. The pond looked the same as when he had left. The trees around the edge of the clearing did not seem to have aged. 

He thought the sun might be a fraction of a degree higher in the sky, but if so it was barely perceptible. Thirty years as a sleeping, pooping monkey and he had nothing tangible to show for it!

He searched the beach for another angry rock and threw it as hard as he could into the lake.

He lived another angry monkey life. He died another angry monkey death. He woke up back on the beach and repeated the process again and again.

He lived lives as self-destructive gunmen who gloried in the kill.

He lived lives as abusive bullies who terrified their own families.

He lived lives as online trolls who destroyed communities.

He lived, and he died, and he always found himself back at that pebble beach, searching for another angry stone.

But eventually, even the strongest anger left on the beach was no longer pure. He began choosing lives driven by power, and domination.

He lived lives as preachers who spread hate and normativity.

He lived lives as fascists who fetishized strength and sameness.

He lived lives as industrialists who crushed their competitors and their workers alike.

As he lived hundreds and then thousands of lives, the sun above the pebble beach slowly emerged from beneath the horizon, but by now he barely noticed.

When he was in the monkey world, he could forget about his situation. He could forget that he was trapped. He could forget that he’d been abandoned. Each time that he woke up on the beach his only thought was about finding the next stone and losing himself in the next life.

He lived lives of luxury and leisure. He slept in big, soft beds and ate foods brought to him from around the world.

He lived lives of pride and admiration. He stood in stadiums and auditoriums while thousands of people chanted his name.

He lived lives of certainty and self-righteousness. And it was during one of those lives that everything suddenly changed.

As lives went, this one had started out fairly unextraordinary. 

He’d been born to a middle class family, gone to school, and read books. 

He found joy in having others listen when he talked, and gravitated towards friend groups with strong beliefs where he could claim attention through rhetorical skill and ideological purity. 

When one group stopped playing along, he could simply switch to a new ideology and start the process again with a new group of friends.

On this particular day, he and some of his comrades heard there was going to be some meaningless neolib “march around a park on the sidewalk” protest. They decided to go show them what a real protest was supposed to look like. 

When he got there, things were spicier than he had expected. The fash had shown up in their riot cop cosplay and started cracking heads. He had lost his taste for violence where he might get hurt, so he stood a ways away from the action, smoking a cigarette and watching things unfold.

Eventually, he spotted a pickup truck weaving around the edge of the crowd. The driver was clearly trying to scare people, and he started wondering if he should ditch the whole thing and go home. 

But then he caught a glimpse of the driver’s face.

And he recognized himself.

And he remembered driving that truck. 

And he remembered what came next.

But he couldn’t stop staring at the face that he was suddenly remembering as his own. The memories were flooding back and it was like he was experiencing the scene from both positions at once. 

He couldn’t look away, because he knew he hadn't looked away. 

He couldn’t run, because he knew he hadn't run.

The truck turned towards him.

The truck sped up.

He kept staring.

He woke up on the pebble beach.

He lay on the beach for a long time, trying to make sense of what had happened. The sun was higher in the sky, and he could feel its gentle midmorning warmth. 

He had never thought to question the assumption that these lives were individual, and distinct.

Had he met himself before? He’d lived so many lives, but he hadn’t paid that much attention to the other people in them. He didn’t remember enough to be sure.

What had caused that moment of recognition? He normally forgot everything about the pebble beach and his life as the Trickster by the time he learned to talk and walk around. 

He had chased that forgetting into life after life for what felt like millions of years. How had that spear of connection broken through into his conscious awareness? Why did he suddenly feel empty without it?

He walked in slow, long circles through the woods around the pond. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. 

He watched the way the patterns of branches changed as he moved past them, new perspectives bringing new alignments and new gaps.

Eventually, he returned to the pond and began searching for stones that radiated curiosity and learning. He knew that he would not remember his questions directly, but perhaps there was knowledge in this monkey world that could help him understand its nature.

He lived lives as scientists, and learned the things that could be learned through observation and experimentation.

He lived lives as academics, and learned the things that could be learned through reading and discussion.

He lived lives as mystics, and learned the things that could be learned through exploration of the spirit and the self.

The knowledge always began to fade once he awoke on the pebble beach, but he tried to find ways to hold onto it. Instead of jumping straight into the next life, he searched the forest for examples of the principles he was learning, anchoring the flighty, fading ideas with stone, and wood, and mushrooms. 

In each life, he was still starting from scratch, but in the forest between the lives, he was slowly putting pieces together.

He started to understand the ways that people’s lives shaped each other. How ideas spread themselves and their effects. How cycles of harm repeated, and repeated, and repeated.

But still, he was no closer to understanding what had broken through to him that day at the protest. He had lived each life in a silo, existing as only one person at a time. Craving self-connection, he started choosing lives of pain and fear, hoping they would at least bring him into contact with his earlier violent selves.

He lived short lives that ended in gunfire.

He lived lives as terrified wives.

He lived lives as the victims of oppressive regimes.

On the beach between the lives, he shook and he cried under the noonday sun, as he tried to process the new memories he had acquired. 

There were parts of lives that felt familiar to him when he thought about them on the beach. But each time he re-entered the monkey world, he lived through his life alone.

He started finding himself drawn to lives of compassion and care. If every person he met was potentially himself, perhaps he could ease his own path through serving others.

He lived lives as doctors and nurses. He lived lives as teachers and nannies. He lived lives as charity workers, social workers, and church workers.

But each time he found himself back on the pebble beach, he was confronted by the way the systems of the monkey world had blunted his understandings. 

His efforts were always filtered through a tangle of power, and self interest. Even his good intentions often brought harm to the people he wanted to help.

He lived lives as organizers, as activists and revolutionaries, trying to change systems and transform outcomes. He bettered neighborhoods and communities in thousands of small ways. But he had already lived his lives of power, and there was nothing he could do now to undo what he had already done.

He lived lives of quiet, searching despair.

He lived many lives as artists and storytellers, as people who could hear the distant echoes of the pebble beach and try to bring that understanding into the monkey world. 

He wrote songs and performed plays, and occasionally across a coffee shop or a black box theater he would feel a hint of the self-recognition and connection that he craved. When that happened he would seek out the lives that included viewing that performance, experiencing it from as many different perspectives as he could, and using its solace to carry him through the harder times.

Eventually, the shadows on the pebble beach grew long, and the pebbles started becoming scarce. 

The lives left were often confusing, as he was born into minds that did not function in the same ways as most he’d encountered.

He learned how to manage senses that lied to him and did not always align with the material world.

He learned how to live with moods and emotions that felt too big for his monkey body to handle.

He learned how to navigate his thoughts and his world without the spoken or gestural languages usually so key to the monkey experience.

By the time the beach was bare, he felt a tiredness deep within his bones. He had lived uncountable centuries in his many lives, and they clung to his limbs like a glacier clings to a mountain, weighing him down while they scoured him bare.

And yet, the sun was still only barely touching the horizon, and Mother Nature was nowhere to be seen. His day was not yet over.

He knew what he had to do, but he wasn’t sure he could make himself do it. He lay on the bare beach for a very long time, feeling his own breath and listening to the tiny wavelets on the surface of the pond. 

He wondered, after all his experiences, if it might not be better to simply stay in the quiet of the beach forever, waiting for the end of time.

But stillness was not a part of his nature, and eventually he stood up, stretched, and headed into the woods to look for the black stones he had rejected all of those billions of lives ago.

He approached the first one cautiously, remembering the shock of the pain and the grief the first time he had touched it. But his perspective was different now. 

As he reached his hand towards the stone he felt a depth and complexity that he had not been aware of before. He took it in his hand, feeling its raw mourning and its loss, but also feeling a fierce sense of community and love, and a defiant hope.

He went from tree to tree through the forest, touching the wounds on the trees where the rocks had struck, and regretting the anger of his distant youth.

Gently, he gathered each stone into a fold of his tunic, transporting them back to their place by the lake.

When he had retrieved every stone that he had once rejected, he sat quietly in front of them, facing the lake. He offered silent apologies for his earlier lack of understanding. He made his peace with what he knew was coming next. And he threw the first black stone into the lake.

The monkey world was dying. He could feel it from the time that he took his first breath. 

The choices he had made in his ill-tempered youth were poisoning the air, heating the water, and scorching the soil. 

As he grew up, he faced scarcities of food, drinking water, and housing. 

The older people around him, having grown up in more comfortable times, could not provide the eldership that he needed. They preferred to wait for the “good times” to come back, and they defended their denial if he tried to talk to them about the truth.

The few useful elders he could find were overworked and traumatized, carrying the wounds of a future they’d been unable to prevent. They passed along their knowledge, but they also passed along their scars.

He joined networks of young people focused on skill sharing and mutual aid. They taught each other how to survive as the systems they’d been taught to depend on crumbled around them. 

They held each other as they grieved the loss of their world. 

And in that grief, they were at last connected.

They cried, and they danced, and they grounded themselves in the knowledge that they were not separate individuals after all, but tiny cells making up a collective whole. They planted trees that they knew would outlive them, and unshackled the rivers from hydroelectric dams. They prepared the world for a time without them, and joked about the cockroach empire that might eventually be their replacement. 

When the oceans finally lost their capacity to produce oxygen, and it became harder and harder to breathe, they faced their end with all of the wisdom of billions of lives behind them.

And they faced it together.

As hard as these lives were, he found himself savoring them. As the pile of stones in front of him grew smaller, he waited longer and longer before throwing the next one in.

But at last, they were all gone, the sun above the pond had set, and he hung his head and wept with the enormity of everything he had experienced. 

Mother Nature gathered him into her arms, and gently stroked his back as he cried and cried. She sang him songs of wind in the trees and songs of water falling over rocks. She washed him clean with gentle rains and dried him with the warm spring sun.

When he was finally ready to open his eyes, he saw that he was no longer in the world of the pebble beach. He was back in the great forest, with all of his siblings around him.

He remembered how he had treated them and he felt ashamed and afraid, pressing close to Mother Nature for comfort.

Bear approached him first. He said nothing, but placed a heavy paw on Trickster’s head in a sign of reassurance and forgiveness. He placed a piece of honeycomb on the ground and stepped back again.

Raven came next. Again he said nothing, but pressed his head against Trickster’s own in a sign of reassurance and forgiveness. He placed a piece of shiny mica on the ground and stepped back again. 

Finally Racoon stepped up, looking a little reluctant. It looked like he might have something he wanted to say. But in the end he simply gave Trickster’s arm a quick squeeze as a sign of reassurance and forgiveness. He placed a fresh-caught fish on the ground before running off with a piece of the honeycomb, because such is the nature of racoons.

When they had gone, Trickster finally found his voice.

"Mother," he said, searching the backs of his hands as if they were maps, "How can I know who I am, when I have been so many?"

"That is a question we all must answer for ourselves every day," she said, stroking his hair, "I cannot answer for you. You are every person that you have ever been. And you will become a new person with every choice you make. You are the one who chooses."

He lay there quietly, focusing on the grounding sensation as she stroked his hair, and thinking through what she had said.

“But Mother,” he said eventually, “what is going to happen now?”

“Now,” she said, gently placing him on his own feet, “Now, the world will be different.”

Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed the story! Because it's a story about seeing things from different perspectives, I've always wanted to hear it told by other storytellers. So if you want to write/draw/sing your own version of the story, you have my full permission to do so, and I'd love to see what you come up with.

Pre-meme-ium Content

Now that we've got a few people supporting us with premium subscriptions, we wanted to find a way to thank our supporters without putting anything useful behind a paywall. So I've started tacking on a couple of memes to the end of each newsletter! Free subscribers will see one meme below, while paid subscribers will get to see all five. If you're living on less than $35k/year, please do not give us money. Just let us know and we'll hook you up with the memes for free.